“I’m not about to sit here and indict private equity,” Booker
said on the "Meet the Press" roundtable. “To me, we’re getting to
a ridiculous point in America.

"Especially that I know I live in a state where pension funds,
unions and other people invest in companies like Bain
Capital. If you look at the totality of Bain
Capital’s record, they’ve done a lot to support businesses, to
grow businesses. And this, to me, I’m very uncomfortable
with.”

It was part of Booker's larger lament of divisive, distracting
politics from both sides.

The Republican National Committee has already seized on that
bolded quote. It blasted out a "They Said It!" email this morning
to reporters, tying Booker to the higher-up Democrats as an Obama
surrogate.

Booker compared the Bain Capital attack ads to the planned super
PAC ads that would have brought up Obama's ties to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. And
he absolutely tore into both sides for distracting the American
public from the real issues.

"This kind of stuff is nauseating to me on both sides. It’s
nauseating to the American public," Booker said. "Enough is
enough — stop attacking private equity, stop attacking
Jeremiah Wright. This stuff has got to stop.
Because what it does is it undermines to me what this country
should be focused on. It’s a distraction from the real issues.
This is either going to be a small campaign about this
crap, or it’s going to be a big campaign, in my opinion, about
the issues that the American public cares about."